All across the country, mental health agencies have adopted the 988 crisis hotline number. But in the Handmaid State, teenagers and children calling that number are being hung up on when in distress, considering suicide, engaging in addictive or compulsive behaviors, planning on running away, or any other mental health emergency.
And it’s all because Idaho legislators hate Planned Parenthood and transgender people.
Last year, to ensure that health care providers weren’t providing contraception, abortion care, or transgender counseling to minors, the legislature passed SB 1329, which mandates that “diagnosis, screening, examination, prevention, treatment, cure, care, or relief of any physical or mental health condition, illness, injury, defect, or disease” cannot be performed on minors without parental consent.
I’ve already reported how one of the consequences of this law is that a teen girl raped by her father cannot report her rape to police because the administration of the rape kit to collect evidence is a “screening” for a “physical condition.”
I’ve also covered the case of a pregnant 13-year-old girl going into labor whom doctors would not treat because there was no contact with a parent to grant permission for her treatment.
Now it’s kids who dial 988 whom the counselors can’t speak to.
“We can hear a little bit, and then we would basically say, ‘we can’t continue the conversation unless you have a parent there who can give consent,’ and then we’d have to end the call,” Alexander Copple, who worked at the hotline, told the Idaho Capital Sun. “And we have no way of knowing or following up to know if there was any help or support that was received.”
